In the manufacture of tissue products, it is often desirable to not only provide a product that exhibits good functional properties, but also aesthetic properties as well. For example, commonly-assigned WO 01/48310 A1 to Burazin et al. published Jul. 5, 2001, entitled “Decorative Wet Molding Fabric For Tissue Making” discloses decorative wet molding fabrics for tissue making in which a textured woven throughdrying fabric is provided with decorative designs using extruded polymeric strands or stitches, for example. While this has been effective, there are instances where the textured background of the throughdrying fabric makes it difficult to clearly see the decorative design. To address this situation, US-2006-0137840-A1 entitled “Textured Tissue Sheets Having Highlighted Design Elements” and US-2006-0157210-A1 entitled “Method of Making Tissue Sheets With Textured Nonwoven Fabrics Having Highlighted Design Elements” disclose the use of highlight areas surrounding the design elements in order to make the design elements more visible. While effective, this approach requires further modification of the throughdrying fabric, which in some instances may be undesirable because of the potential reduction in air permeability of the fabric and hence reduced drying efficiency.
Therefore there is a need for a throughdrying fabric having high air permeability and which imparts decorative designs to the tissue sheet.